Episode 5: Peeking

*Click*

Voncid:  This doesn’t seem like a significant case.

Luca:  I get that, but to operate effectively we need to upkeep certain relationships and so…

Voncid: So here we are looking at a girl who fell out of a dormitory window.

Luca: I knew you’d be hesitant to look at this.  Police have it as an accident, everyone secretly thinks it might be a suicide, but won’t say it because of who her father is.

I know it’s thin, even as a favor, so I did some preliminary.

Voncid: And?

Luca: *Remembering with a chill*  It’s something.

Luca: It took some effort.  A bit of elbow grease and a some slight risking of life and limb hanging out a window, but this showed up after being dusted with oxidized silver flakes and hit with a UV light after midnight.  

Voncid:  I see.

Luca: handprints, not hers, outside a fourth floor window.

Voncid: …six fingers.

Luca: someone pulled her out.

Voncid:  I’ll go.  Where is she?

Luca: Conneticutt, near Hartford.  Funeral is tomorrow, but there’s a red eye.

Voncid: *laughs a bit bitterly* the hill

Luca: What, not a fan?

Voncid: Nothing like that.  I’ve never been in person.

Luca: well… shall we?

Voncid: we shall.

*Two clicks as the recorder stops and resumes*

The audio resumes in a morgue, fluorescent lighting buzzes above. It does nothing for her features.

Voncid: This evening’s interview is of Christine Talbot.  The subject's skull was badly fractured in a fall from a fourth floor window and significant repair will be required.  In the case of severe cranial trauma the subject will usually be disoriented and memory can be an issue.  Repairing a damaged brain is difficult, but not impossible.  A shattered mind is far harder, madness is the most difficult reclaiming to master and the most dangerous.  And the last skill I perfected. Recovery beginning now.

*Chime, whispers, cracking and creaking as her skull slowly reassembles itself.*

Luca: *Sounding ill* Holy shit.

Voncid:  Are things seeming clearer Christine?  Can you tell us what has been following you?  Tell us what happened.

Christine: *Shakily, confused*

I have to go… I have to hide.  It follows me.  It’s going to find… no one believes.

Voncid:  I do Christine.  I do believe you.  

Christine: what does it want?  Why won’t it leave me alone?

Voncid:  Remain calm, nothing can ever hurt you again.

Christine: *taking a deep breath, relaxing*  That’s… well at least there’s that.

Voncid:  Now, tell us about your fall.

Christine: Fall… Fall.  I remember… Fall.  I took Fall.  I took Fall off.  I took the fall semester off, right, right, *increasingly sure of herself*I took the fall semester off, my dad said I should celebrate graduating, travel a bit.  I never figured out why he really wanted me out of the country, but who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth. I did.  It was great.  I visited Greta, she’d gone abroad the year before, we did the whole europe thing for like three months.  It was amazing.  Dad had to basically drag me back to the states, I seriously considered going awol.

Dad: You are not running off into Europe, for god’s sakes Chrissy you’ll get human trafficked.

Christine:  He didn’t mention anything about how bad it would make him look, or that there was an election coming up, or anything about him, kept it all to how college was a right of passage and how I'd love it once I got there.  He kept all the selfish bullshit that I knew was actually driving him to himself, so I had to give him credit for that at least. 

So I came home, packed up, and: Trinity College.

You know it’s located in Gallows Hill?  I don’t have to tell you that this part of the world and hanging hills are pretty well acquainted?  Hell, I am exactly the kind of unruly and willful young woman the old pilgrim psychos would have made a case against.  I drove through the cold past the gnarled old trees I might have been sent swinging in, what, two hundred years ago?  Two hundred fifty?

The patriarchy is weird.  You’d think you’d change the names of incredibly evil things that happened in the past.

But hey, the evil’s still not gone, so I guess that would be dishonest. Well, more dishonest.

Moved my stuff into Mclean Hall, fourth floor.

Met my roommate, Angie, realized she was a complete drag, but guessed that might be for the best in a roommate.

I did a tour of our floor, met everyone.  It was kinda fun.  High school, everything is so worn out by the time you graduate.  Everyone knows everyone knows everything about everyone.  Here, I was new.  I got to be brand new.

Not only because we were all away from home, got to be whoever we wanted now, but they had all been together a whole semester, got to know one another, and then I appear, all fresh and new.

I got to be the star of the show, can’t complain really, I don’t hate attention.

It was the third night I was there when things got *can’t find the word* wrong.

I remember I went to sleep at, like, eleven.  It was early for me, but classes started next week and I was going to be dragging if I didn’t get my sleep schedule together, so I went to sleep early, pried myself away from the sitting circle in Ben’s, that was the popular hang out, popped a sleeping pill and actually fell asleep despite a million things running through my head.

So when I popped awake with this weird feeling and saw that it was just after midnight, I was pretty surprised.

It was dead quiet. Angie was an unmoving lump in her bed.  

The room was dark, just a slice of light under the door from the hall.

It’s the weirdest thing.  People always say “I could feel their eyes on me” and I never got that before that night.  It’s a pressure.  Like a wave of pressure pushing on you.  The watching.

Your hairs go up.

Shivers go.

My eyes are scanning the dark, back and forth, but even as my eyes adjust I can’t see anything, there’s nothing to see, but I just can’t get the feeling of these… eyes… off  me.

It’s sticking to my skin.  This panicky, sick, icky feeling pushing in and in and in and in.

So I turn my lamp on, but there’s still nothing.

I actually pick up my table lamp, I’m basically aiming it around the room like a torch, and then I see the window is open.

There’s something there, like, something hooked on the window.

They’re kinda fleshy and red and I don’t know what I’m looking at until they wiggle.

Then I can see the knuckles and fingernails.

At the same moment the lamplight catches the eyes.

Two, huge, round eyes peering over the windowsill.  It’s peeking.

I make eye contact with it and it freezes.

Then it giggles.

*Giggles like a child’s*

I babysat when I was younger.  Dad said it would teach me responsibility.

We played hide and seek.

The kid, Maddie, she giggled like that when I found her.

But the voice… It wasn’t a person.  I know it wasn’t a prank.

I screamed and threw the lamp at it.

The cord ripped out of the wall.  Pulled everything off my bedside table.  The lamp smashed into the window.

I got to the door, screaming for Angie to wake up, for her to get out, I turned the lights on, but I didn’t see it now.

People were coming out of their rooms.

Security showed up.

*Increasingly panicked, talking fast*

There were discussions of if I had a really bad nightmare, or if it was a night terror, what the difference was, or if it was sleep paralysis and the RA telling me I shouldn't take sleep aids anymore and had I tried homeopathic sleep remedies? It all glossed over the fact that I never stopped feeling like I was being watched.

I never got my sleep schedule right.

Classes started and I was almost too exhausted to go.

That creepy sick pressure never quite left, but on the first day of my first class, it came back with a vengeance. 

The class was packed, one of those big lecture hall spaces, you know, like in the movies.  Students were packed in pretty tight, and I was late, so I wound up having to sit basically in the front row.

So when that feeling starts ramping up, everybody notices that I keep looking behind me, glancing over my shoulder… it gets worse and worse, until the professor notices too.

Professor: “Is there something back there we should direct our attention to?”

Christine: I try to apologize, try to make myself not turn around, but I just can’t shake it and it’s not long before I look over my shoulder again.

This time though I see it, at the back of the room, there’s a door, goes to an office or closet or I don’t know what, but it’s open and…

There it is.

Peeking out through a crack in the door, a huge yellowy, watery eye.

It’s all I can do not to scream.

But instead I pretend not to see.  I pretend I don’t notice.  I tug at the shirt of the guy next to me and as quiet as I can, I was just like 

 *Whispers*

“There is a door at the back of the room, will you look at it, and tell me what you see?”

I don’t know what’s happening, but I have to know if he can see it too.  I don’t know if I need a cat scan or an exorcist, you know?

He seems sketched out, but he agrees…

I don’t know what I was expecting.

But I definitely didn’t expect what happened.

There’s this crash next to me as he jumps up from his seat, knocks all his stuff to the floor.

And then it giggled.

*The same giggle as before, getting louder as more voices join*

And then, the giggle spread.  The people in the back of the room start laughing, and then more people are laughing, they are all looking at the kid who jumped up, but they are giggling this weird sound.  It’s rolling through the room.

*The giggling continues, then fades*

I don’t know where the bravery came from, maybe the sleep deprivation, but I rushed it, I charged up those steps as fast as I could towards it.

It slipped backwards, the door shut slowly on one of those pressure hinges and I caught it before it closed. I pulled the door open and saw this gangly pinkish red thing disappear up into an air duct.

I screamed at it as I heard it crawling away.

“Leave me alone!”

But it didn’t.

That kid in my class, I never got to talk to him.  The professor insisted I explain myself and by the time I got out of there, asked around, and found out who he was, Charles something, found out where he lived, he’d moved out.  Gone home.

Smart bastard, turns out.

Don’t know how he explained that one, *mockingly* “mom, dad, I saw a monster on campus. Can I come home please?”

But he was right to run.

It got worse after that.

*Eerie music begins*

I realized that week, that feeling I had had after that first night, that feeling of something always watching me?  That it had been.

I started to see it all the time. I had probably been seeing it the last week too, but wasn’t really looking, didn’t realize what I was looking at.

I saw it peeking out a window at me as I went into the administration building to explain my behavior.

I saw it peering out around a dumpster at me as I went to get food.

Saw it peeking up over the counter at me as I tried to keep my food down.

I tried asking a few other people if they saw it, but I think it had gotten wise to me.  It would duck down, or slink away if I started talking to other people.

So I tried to never be alone.  I went where people were, found parties and late night hang outs, whatever it took.  The few times I was by myself, I knew I wasn’t.  I knew it was there somewhere.

I saw it watching me from a vent, a sewer grate, through the branches of trees.

I tried asking it what it wanted. I tried screaming obscenities at i., I tried begging it to leave me alone.

It would just giggle at me and stare.

I went to yet another frat party, *laughing at herself* I was so tired I could hardly fake conversation with anyone.

It was watching me through an open doorway across the street while I was on the porch, I don’t know where it was while I was inside, probably a window.

*Laughing, desperately* I was just so tired.

This guy I was talking to, John Anderson, I remember because I remember thinking he could have been named Guy Manderson, which is stupid but he was talking to me about photography.  He had this new telephoto whatever and a new something lens and how real cameras really are still better and everyone thinks their phone photos are so great but if they just saw how it looks on a blah blah blah…

I don’t know how it took me so long to think of taking take a picture of it.

I don’t think… I don’t think I really believed it was real.  Not even with that other kid seeing it.  Seeing isn’t really always believing I guess.

So that night, I laid in bed, waiting, my phone camera primed and ready, my new bedside light set up under the window so if it took up its usual peeking spot there it would just be slightly illuminated.

I didn’t feel it watching yet, but it never left me alone for long.

I practiced pulling my phone out from under my covers and snapping a picture. The autofocus sucked, it took forever… It was never going to work.

*Proud of herself*

But eventually I got pretty quick, I had a chance.  

I waited.

Sure enough, just after midnight I heard it giggle. 

*Giggle*

But it was weird, it sounded kind of far away.  The laugh didn’t sound like it was getting any closer either.

I kept my phone down at my side and slipped out of bed.

I crawled across the floor, keeping low.

Suddenly I imagined this was how it must have felt sneaking around to watch me.

The tension, the anticipation, there was a weird kind of excitement in watching people who don’t know you were watching.

I got to the window, the laughter was still far away, was it down on the street?

I peered up over the edge, looked down.

It was standing on the street, a streetlight framing it in a yellow pool.  It was like a shot from one of those old detective movies.

It was looking up at my window, but it was far away. I felt a moment of safety, so  I peeked up a bit more, brought my phone up, fiddled with the focus, got it in frame…

“How the fuck do you like someone peeking at you.”

But then, then…

Oh… I… *realizing/remembering what happened to her*

Oh no…

I never thought there might be two of them.

*giggling*

The window was open so fast

Those long snakey fingers wrapped around my shoulders and there was a yank and…

I was in the air

Falling.

Falling head first into the air

*Giggling gets louder*

Into the air that was full of weird little giggles.

Voncid:  *sighs deeply*  peace now.  Safe journey as you travel afar.

*Whispers, cracking*

Luca: Oh god… I think I’m going to be sick.  

Voncid:  I should have warned you that such repairs do not last after the recalling ends.  If you must vomit please use the sink.

*Two clicks as the audio cuts and returns.*

Voncid: Reclaimers notes.  Luca and I are currently en route to the home of a Charles Baybridge.  His rushed withdrawal from school may have taken him out of harm's way, but I am not willing to risk it.  He lives only a few hours from the campus.  Which will make reaching him quick for us, but unfortunately quick for the entities should they follow him, now that he has seen them, something tells me they will.

If he is alive, he will make excellent bait for a trap I’m afraid we will need to set.  

These peeking creatures as they were described… I cannot be certain… but they definitely fit the description by some of the Venerim of … *pauses for discomfort with the thought* advance scouts.  

Further files on this line of inquiry will be marked “Peekers”.  

*Click*